On the afternoon of Oct. 29, protesters gathered in front of one of Greensboro’s premier coffee shops, the Green Bean. Throughout the day, they told potential customers to boycott the Green Bean and handed out fliers with the title “The New Jim Crow” and a picture of Katie Southard, the owner of the establishment.
The protests continued through Sunday and appeared to show no sign of letting up.
But on Monday afternoon, the sidewalk of the Elm Street storefront had returned to a peaceful norm, only occupied with fleeting pedestrians and idle patrons, coffee in hand.
The protests had been instigated by a single interaction in the coffee shop on a bustling Saturday morning.
“I was talking to a friend and another customer grabbed my arm and said, ‘Oh my god, there’s going to be a fight,'” said Southard, “I saw five of the guys from the Latin Kings and Queens dressed in black and gold, surrounding one guy at the counter and demanding an apology in what I perceived as an aggressive manner.”
One of these men was Jorge Cornell, a candidate who lost in the recent city council election. The Guilfordian contacted Cornell, but he declined to comment on the incident.
Local blogger Ed Cone spoke to Cornell on the sidewalk on Monday, before the protesters had dispersed for good. According to Cone’s website, EdCone.com, Cornell described the initial interaction with Southard differently. Cornell said that he asked another customer who had bumped into one of his female friends to apologize, which he did. However, Southard then requested the men to leave because she considered them disruptive. Protests formed outside by the afternoon, with protesters saying Southard’s actions were racially motivated.
In the following two days, news of the incident traveled informally through the Internet and word of mouth, usually resulting in contradicting ideas of what really happened.
Junior Peach McCarty stumbled upon a Facebook group dedicated to exposing the event.
“I read it and they kept giving updates,” said McCarty. “There were definitely some racial vibes the way it was described. Granted, though, we only got one side of it.”
As the community caught wind of the event, individuals and groups took the initiative to get involved. NC Rising, a local anarchist organization, was primarily responsible for organizing the protests and distributing fliers that called Southard a white supremacist.
“They witnessed half of it,” said Southard. “They blew it way out of proportion. When it was between (Cornell) and me, it was more of a misunderstanding of words.”
Cone believes that the protests had little to do with what actually occurred.
“To say that a … reaction to a group of people in your store is the same thing as Jim Crow or White Supremacy and to threaten a woman’s business because of it … now create(s) another problem,” Cone told The Guilfordian. “You’ve changed the subject and you are asking for respect but you are not doing it in a respectful or thoughtful way. That creates a whole new set of problems.”
The protests ran their course as a hot topic. However, amid the focus on who was at fault, the civil mediation that ended the protests received little attention.
“They all sat down at a table together and said their pieces to one another and came to an agreement and (made) concessions with one another,” said a Green Bean employee who requested to remain anonymous.
The mediation was led by Cornell’s pastor, Reverend Nelson Johnson.
Southard believes that the two parties are emerging from the incident with concern for a greater well being; they are even attending a racial awareness seminar together.
“I told Jorge, ‘It sucks that we spent two whole days basically hating each other,’ but hopefully this will be a long lasting friendship in which we can do many positive things that will outweigh that,” said Southard.